Traditionally, the conventional approach to protecting structures from disruptive forces, for example strong winds, seismic vibrations, or explosions, has been to strengthen structures themselves—either by fortifying a structure's walls and foundations, or simply by utilizing stronger, perhaps heavier materials. In the last few decades, those skilled in the art have understood that such methods are not appropriate for medium to tall structures due to the frequencies that are generated through, for example, buildings or bridges, which ultimately cause the structures to collapse. These old methods of strengthening structures are thus not as effective for any structure as newly developed methods.
Many efforts have also been directed to implementing various types of devices that absorb energy from a disruptive force in order to dampen the disruptive vibrations and prevent vibration forces from damaging structural components or entire structures altogether.
Relatively recent, base isolation devices have been developed to isolate or decouple structures from disruptive forces, such as seismic forces produced during an earthquake, or strong winds, particularly against structures such as buildings. However, these systems have proven expensive and inadequate for smaller structures such as low to mid-rise buildings and family homes.
In addition to the higher cost that makes base isolation and similar devices inadequate for low to mid-rise buildings (i.e. most contractors won't implement such devices in low to mid-rise buildings or family homes in order to keep budgets low), current designs are difficult to predict mathematically, which poses a major problem for engineers.
For structure designs that do implement complex base isolation systems, for example corporate or government buildings, traditional passive systems have been used. However, these traditional passive systems currently in use may react to light winds and occupancy loads in a manner that causes the building to sway slightly. This sway may be felt by the occupants and often causes an undesirable “sea sick” feeling. Thus, since such passive systems' sensitivity may not be adjusted, the structures or building which implement such technology are frequently affected with undesirable motion.
Another one of the problems associated with past efforts to protect a structure from disruptive forces is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to anticipate the degree of strength of the disruptive force, as well as the particular movements of the disruptive force in and around a structure. An energy absorbing device may be able to in fact absorb the energy from a disruptive force; however, if the disruptive force is extremely large or if the structure is vibrated in varying directions, the damage may ultimately lead to the collapse of the structure unless immediate maintenance or adjustments are made following the disruptive event—this is often expensive and requires use of limited resources (i.e. deploying personnel such as technicians, engineers, experts, etc.).
Thus, while present practices have employed methods to repair and adjust structures following disruptive events, for example, an earthquake, or a blast from an explosion, such methods require significant man power and expenditure of valuable resources: trained personnel, eligible engineers, and city inspectors are usually deployed even in response to minor events due to the lack of information available about a particular structure's stability following such an event.
Furthermore, current systems require maintenance during which energy absorbing devices installed within a structure must be routinely inspected in order to assure that the energy absorption system is properly functioning.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a system and method that is cost effective, requires less maintenance, and is capable of self adjustment and easily adaptable to forces inflicted during an event wherein disruptive forces are applied to a structure. It is to these ends that the present invention has been developed.